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Dimitris' taxi is available for all your holiday needs. If you're coming to Hania and you need a taxi, we would like to drive you around. More info: drop me a line at: mverivaki hotmail com

Wednesday, 9 January 2008

Pizza (Πίτσα με ζύμη μαγιάς)

I made a classic pizza using all the normal pizza parlour toppings using my favorite oily ladeniadough (click on the link for the dough recipe; see medcookingalaska for the original recipe). This has got to be the best pizza I have ever made. The recipe I used for making the crust is the same one as for ladenia, the best crust I have ever made with yeast. Once I had spread the dough out, I divided it into four uneven quarters. I topped each part appropriately for each member of the family. My husband likes the works, Christine likes a tomato sauce base on her cheese and ham pizza, Aristotle likes only cheese and ham, while I'm more of a vegetarian fan. It was a smash hit. The pictures speak for themselves. Making this pizza reminded me of my late mother who always baked home-made pizza for us, and loved to make 'the works' pizza. She even beat an egg and poured it over all the toppings. She would never make one pizza; it always had to be three: one in the tapsi (the Greek roasting dish) and two in classic holes-in-the-base pizza tins that she would deep-freeze. Good news too; even though Yianna spurned it the first time, she wants me to make the carnivore version of ladenia for her dinner party next week!

The dough remains the same as for the original recipe for ladenia (Greek pizza). The pizza toppings I chose were: ham and cheese slices, finely sliced tomato and green pepper and pepperoni salami. I forgot all about the mushrooms I had planned for my part of the pizza; I usually come last in terms of priority! As for anchovies and pineapple, we're more into Mediterranean toppings rather than the Hawaiian version; we never mix our sweet with our savoury. I drizzled olive oil and oregano over everything, and cooked it till the dough was ready. The tin needs to be the large Greek-style roasting dish, the same kind I used for ladenia.

A really delicious thick tomato sauce base can be used instead of the tomato slices and drizzling olive oil and oregano on the top, such as my puttanesca sauce for pasta. While it's cooking, it will turn the whole house into a Mediterranean aromatics factory! Believe it or not, the Greeks apparently invented pizza - the Italians simply perfected it. No wonder my mother used this kind of sauce in her pizzas. However you make this pizza, it will not last long; it's too delicious to remain uneaten. Maybe my mother was right to cook so many at a time!